At this point, we've heard "I would have upgraded if I knew that!" from so many people we send this information about the upgrades to everybody who orders "Regular" (or even MAX) Crashproofing. Here's two things to consider- first, it's not possible to properly upgrade most of the Crashproofing designs by just adding more rods later- most of your "regular" rods will be in the way. That's not to say that adding more rods won't make your plane stronger- it will! But we acheive even better strengthening results with less weight in the higher level Crashproofing designs. Second, this is your one chance to get your plane in the hands of our master craftsmen. We advise you make the most of it - it's better than kicking yourself later!

The "Regular" levels of our designs are all based on my own early flying, which was much slower speed and much less "radical" in terms of aerobatics. As I got more experienced, the reinforcement designs I did gave me the same level of protection at higher speeds, and in crashes from higher altitudes, as well as airframe reinforcement that could handle the stress of more aggressive maneuvers, like snapping out of a high speed dive without folding up the wings. The biggest problem with having lower levels of protection is that many people's flying abilities increase quite rapidly, leaving them with an under-protected plane. Consequently, unless your intention is to remain at the "fly a few circuits and land" level of piloting, you're much better off reinforcing your plane for your future as a fighter jockey- it's probably much closer than you think!

For starters, EPO type foam is a superb material for making planes for many reasons- but it's not able to withstand stresses from many circumstances outside the intended use, which, of course, is flying. Foam is also not really able to withstand repeated high-G stress from aerobatic flying- foam weakens a bit more each time it's bent. You keep flying, the foam keeps flexing, and before you know it your wings are getting floppy. But not if you've reinforced them with Carbon Fiber spars! Less bending means longer life, if you're a piece of foam. And nobody (except for us, of course!) intends to crash their plane, so the planes are not designed to handle that. They are designed to break in crashes, which gives the manufacturers exactly what they want- lots more of your money, made by selling you replacement parts for your plane- or a whole new plane, for that matter. Here's a simple fact to consider- we stopped ordering any foam replacement parts from distributors several years ago, because our customers don't buy them. We still have over 90% of the replacement parts we included in our first order 4 years ago, sitting taking up space in our warehouse. They'll probably sit there forever. Other sellers, you may have noticed, are quite often out of stock in their foam replacement parts catalogs, since they do a brisk business selling new foam parts to customers who believed they'd never need them. Har de har har.

If you check some prices, you'll also find that a replacement fuselage usually costs about as much as our reinforcement kit. Add to that the shipping cost, the time spent moving all the parts from your broken fuselage to the new one, and the time LOST that you had intended to spend having fun. How expensive does reinforcement look NOW?

But I digress. Let's get back to the topic

The higher levels of reinforcement (MAX and SUPERMAX) have greater levels of protection and airframe strengthening by adding combinations of more and/or heavier and/or longer rods. For instance, the front wingtip rod is 6" in most FMS 1400mm Regular kits, 10" in the MAX, and 12" to 18" in the SUPERMAX. The Full Wing Rod (from the tip to the root) is not in the regular kit. In most planes with wingspans 1000mm to 1400mm, the Full Wing Rod in the MAX kit is a 4mm tube, and in the SUPERMAX a 5mm tube. The rest of the design differences between kits are like that. Generally, if you're prepping the plane yourself, you'll need to drill deeper holes (for instance, 12" to 18" rather than 6") for many MAX and SUPERMAX rods, and you'll need to drill more holes for rods that aren't in the regular kit at all.

You can tell the difference in protection by looking at your plane, and seeing how many weak points are crossed by shorter rods vs longer ones. For instance, with most Regular Kits, the wingtip front corner is protected by the 6" front rod, which will keep the wingtip intact in things like a tip-over on landing. The long leading edge rod of the SUPERMAX also crosses the areas with weak points, like servo pockets and other cutouts in the foam, giving much more strength and protection (wings tend to crack starting at cutouts like servo pockets and inside corners like at the end of the aileron). so, in the MAX kit, this front wingtip rod is longer, and a Full Wing Rod (wingtip to wing root) is added at the middle of the wingtip. The SUPERMAX kits have a heavier Full Wing Rod, and most have a third rod in the trailing edge of the wingtip. The noses get the same type of increases as the wings in number, diameter, and length of rods, and the SUPERMAX kits also have a number of small diameter rods protecting many thin, easily breakable parts of the plane. If your Crashproofing kit is prepped or installed by us, many of the wing rods are also the full width of the wing, rather than rods from each end that overlap in the middle. We have some VERY long drill bits!

The fuselages are protected with rods that start at the nose, as far forward as the specific plane allows. Most planes have at least 2 rods that go from nose to tail, many have 3, and some have 4. Most planes with spinners have rods that go to the back of the spinner, and most removable cowls have separate rods. Wherever possible, the main fuselage rods extend to the front point of the cowl to absorb impact energy starting as close as possible to the front of the nose. More and/or longer and/or heavier rods are used in the nose in MAX and SUPERMAX designs, along with solid rods that taper from 5 or 6mm diameter at the nose to 2.5 or 3mm diameter in the rear section, for optimal protection with better CG balance. And ALL of our rods or tubes are solidly glued to the foam for their entire length, from nose to tail and wingtip to wingtip, for maximum strength.

Planes like the fully tricked out HAWKFIGHTER (our flagship design) have plastic nose and wing root plates as well, bringing the survivability of the fuselage to new, unheard of levels. The HAWKFIGHTER 8 test plane was impaled straight into the ground (on a lawn) to a depth of 3" or more in THREE "flying speed" test crashes before we even made the sales video - and the Hawkfighter 8 has a 70+MPH top speed! (We just wanted to make sure it worked. LOL.) I like to show that footage to people who say "You can't crashproof a plane". They're right - you can't. "Crashproofing" is just a trade name, but the reality is this- you CAN make a plane FAR harder to break, and that is exactly what our Crashproofing does. Another thing you'll read in forums is that "heavier planes fly like crap". Our Hawkfighter is nearly DOUBLE the weight of the Hawksky it's made from (1220g vs 625g), and it has a 15% smaller wing area to boot. Here's a video showing the performance and handling of the Hawkfighter 7. It's a good thing to keep in mind when reading the authoritative sounding proclamations on forums written by people who have never flown (or even seen!) one of our reinforced planes. (The Hawkfighter V8 video coming up shows a number of lawndart maneuvers and cartwheels "we" did with it before even shooting the sales video, and for the video I did an intentional vertical power dive from about 100 feet up, straight in at 3/4 throttle (about 50MPH). Total damage for all those crashes? One broken motor mount from that last vertical power dive, and one 2" crack in the tip of the nose. YEAH, BABY!! )

Simply described, the Regular Kits will protect previously unprotected areas of your plane for low speed (5 to 10 MPH) impacts, like a flubbed landing, and they do a great job of that. The MAX kits will minimize damage to your plane for impacts during low speed, low altitude flying. The SUPERMAX kits will minimize damage from higher speed impacts, and add protection to a lot of the types of places that can get torn on a car door, etc. The 2 top levels increase the strength and rigidity of your entire airframe for better handling, because with the longer and stronger rods you get FAR less wing flexing and twisting, giving you crisper, cleaner handling.

As far as weight, you can see how all of the planes handle in our videos. ALL of the planes in our videos have SUPERMAX Crashproofing installed, as well as additional Plastic Plate kits and other weight added, like bigger batteries. Some planes we add even more weight to, to increase the realistic look of the flight characteristics. In short, there are exactly zero planes in our videos that don't have a lot of added weight for the test flights.

If you're installing your kit, check out this video to see one of the types of holes you'll need to drill. We also have several other methods for drilling this type of hole (wingtip to wing root), and holes that need to be drilled in other locations as well.